Quickstart:

Download and install:

Start up World of Warcraft and make sure all addons are marked to be loaded (in the addon selection screen).

Importing into GatherMate2:

type: /gathermate2

Go to 'Import Data' and then to 'GatherMate2Data' (left side)

If you already have herbs/mines of yourself, select 'Merge' from the 'Import Style' dropdown, otherwise 'Overwrite' is ok.

Select which sources you want to import (ea: Mining/Herbalism) and tick their respective boxes.

Hit the 'Import GatherMate2Data' button on the bottom.

Creating your first route:

type: /routes

Go to 'Add' (left side)

Type the name of your route (and press 'Okay' or enter)

Now select the zone you want to create a route in from the 'Select Zone' dropdown.

Make sure the 'GatherMate2' source has it's checkbox ticked.

Select which nodes (ea: what type of herbs/mines/fish) should be used to create your route.

Hit the 'Create Route' button.

Done! you can now go to the zone and follow the generated 'route' on your minimap.

You can change the color in the 'Line Settings' tab (and also completely hide the route)

Open your worldmap on the zone you just created a route in, and you will see a massive whirling of lines (light-redish).

Changing/Optimizing your route:

type: /routes

Go to 'Routes' and then the zone you made your route in and finally to the route you created. This has taken you to the 'Information'-tab of this route.

Click on the 'Optimize Route' tab.

Hit the 'Cluster' button, this is usually advisable as most zones contain large amounts of nodes. Clustering will group 'nearby' nodes onto 1 point and the default distance is easily viewable on the minimap.

Hit the 'Foreground' button, this will try an optimization of the length of your route (you can see it being updated after it finishes if you use a map addon like Mapster).

Keep hitting the 'Foreground' button to try and make the route smaller,

Changes:

Changes from v1.3.3 to v1.4.0 (6 May 2011)

Fixed Routes to work with TomTom 4.1 (which has some API changes). Reduced reliance on TomTom's API. That is, we no longer use Astrolabe in TomTom anymore.

Fixed issues with map phasing interfering with Routes in Uldum, Hyjal, Twilight Highlands, Gilneas, Gilneas City and The Lost Isles.

Routes will no longer error on finding invalid node data in GatherMate2 and will just ignore them.

Add "Recreate Route" button for routes (found next to "Delete" route button). This recreates the route using the same creation settings, but only works for data from GatherMate2 and Gatherer. It even works for a route created in one of them, you switch addons, and then recreating it from the other!

Improvements submitted by Mikk.

Improve route optimizing speed by 10% by not using table recycling.

Improve background route optimizing speed by 30% by checking execution time and yielding less often (resulting in more stable FPS).

Progress of background execution is now shown in the status bar of the Routes configuration if it is open.

Changes from v1.3.2 to v1.3.3 (13 December 2010)

Fix issue in Hyjal, Twilight Highlands, Uldum (and also Gilneas and The Lost Isles which have no collectible nodes) zones. These zones contained map phasing where the map shown to you depends on which phase you were in. Routes treated these different phase maps as separate zones, resulting in a potential "no data found" depending on which phase you logged on your character in. This has been fixed.

Changes from v1.3.1 to v1.3.2 (11 December 2010)

Fix for errors when using Routes with Gatherer and TomTom.

Changes from v1.3.0 to v1.3.1 (10 December 2010)

Updated for patch 4.0.3 live servers. Happy farming in the new Cataclysm zones! You may need to restart your WoW client completely after updating Routes.

Changes from v1.2.8a to v1.3.0 (18 October 2010)

Updated for patch 4.0.1 live servers (not closed beta!)

We won't complain anymore about Carbonite pretending to be Cartographer.

We will now register the /routes slash command for non-English users too

Fix a long standing obscure bug where a route would be created with node types that aren't selected.

Significantly reduce memory usage of Routes. Roughly 13kb less per route so if you have say 50 routes, that's 650kb less. This update has no effect on CPU usage or FPS.

Fix up errors caused by patch 4.0.1 changes to professions and skills. Add Archaeology to the node types to support GatherMate2 (but note that while GatherMate2 is usable on the Cataclysm beta, Routes currently is not)

Add support for GatherMate2. Please stop using GatherMate. GatherMate is now only maintained for China-wow and is not Cataclysm compatible.

Changes from v1.2.7 to v1.2.8a (23 December 2009)

Updated TOC for 3.3.0.

No functional changes (when will people finally learn to simply check the stupid 'Load out of date Addons' box?)

After you initially create (Add) a route name, you have to scroll down to choose what to include in the route. Once you've made your selection(s), click the corresponding "Create Route" button to finalize creation.

Although I get the same "missing data" errors on startup, Routes is still working for me in 4.0.3a. I'm guessing that it just won't work in the areas it doesn't have data for. I'm using the latest release (not alpha) version of Routes on a US client. The primary issue I have now is that the Gathermate2 database is all screwed up, most likely due to mixed up Wowhead data. This has nothing to do with Routes, of course :)

Only issue I've had is I start Tomtom waypoints, the first node I hit causes the arrow to vanish and not go on to the next. After that, trying to start using Tomtom (whether by bind or the button) doesn't work. Only fix is to /reloadui and click start again, but then the problem repeats: leads me to one point, then stops until a reload is done.

Question: is there an easy way to toggle the showing of routes on and off, without untracking? I can't get Fubar_RoutesFu to work with my LDB display (although I didn't try very hard tbh) and I can't seem to find a keybinding in the keybindings menu. If there isn't one, would you consider adding either a keybinding or a slash command to enable/disable it on the fly? I'll open a ticket if you like, but I thought since I'm unsure whether the functionality already exists, I'd just ask.

Namj, try clustering your nodes before you optimize or select less points to optimize (ea difference sources), also turning off 'extra' optimization will reduce the time immensely.

Depending on the speed of your PC wow will hang for some time (normally not longer than 15-30 seconds with 'reasonable' amount of nodes).

When I just tried to optimize a route in the barrens with 712 nodes in it my pc hang for 11 minutes and disconnected after. I reclustered the nodes on 60 yards and ended up with 373 nodes which it optimized in 82 seconds (4 passes, extra optimization). When I unticked the 'extra optimization' it only took 35 seconds (also 4 passes, 3 took 27s).

If it hangs longer, you are selecting too much nodes for your pc to optmize over :)